


Break Me Like a Promise

by Bohemienne



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Homophobic Language, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-19 15:25:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8214134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bohemienne/pseuds/Bohemienne
Summary: It won't hurt forever, Steve tells him. But it might last.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title shamelessly stolen from Tiffany Schmidt.
> 
> <3 [Bohemienne](http://starandshield.tumblr.com)

1.

It isn’t weird, he thinks, to think about your best friend so much. To memorize their speech patterns, their little tics, the position of the moles on their face so you can see them when you close your eyes. This is what it means to have a friend, a real friend, not like Tommy O’Brien who’d soon as trade Bucky for a bottle of Coca-Cola as kick someone’s ass for him—a friend who thinks of you before he thinks of himself, who appears outside your window on the fire escape every time he hears your pops yelling and carrying on. A friend who sleeps in your bed like he’s your brother and your guardian angel and all the disciples rolled into one.

It isn’t weird because it’s how he thinks about Steve. And there’s nothing unusual with that. He’s got a good friend in Steve, that’s all, and whatever stupid names Bertie Maniscewiz wants to call them, queen and fairy and queer, he’s wrong, he’s so wrong.

 

2.

Steve just had to go and say it, didn’t he.

Sprawled out on the cushions they hauled up to the rooftop, stars flickering over them, the hot garbage stink of summer reaching them from ten stories down, Steve just has to admit it. He’s got the hots for Eleanor Malone. He wants advice, he wants technique, he wants all of Bucky’s tricks, and god dammit if it isn’t like he’s shaking the table where Bucky’s built his stupid house of cards.

_Well, when you take her out—_

_But how do I take her out, Buck, how do I ask—_

And he can only smoke and mirrors so long, so well, before Steve’s gonna learn he was lying about all those broads in school. He’s supposed to be the expert, he’s the goddamned ladies’ man, so he says _here let me show you, guaranteed to make her panties drop_ and he gives Steve time to say no.

This’ll be important later. Steve could’ve stopped him. Any time.

It’s his chest pressed against Steve’s chest. It’s their heartbeats thudding as one. It’s his hands on those fine cheekbones, thumbs tracing those moles he memorized. It’s the sour breath hanging between them, coney dogs and ice cream from the corner shop, and the way Steve’s bright blue eyes shine inside Bucky more than any starlight.

And then it’s lips on lips and Bucky’s sighing into Steve’s teeth and pushing his mouth open with his tongue, oh god he’s tasting him and it’s even sweeter than all the times he imagined it, not that he imagines it all the time, but sometimes it just lives under his skin like some kind of sickness but now he’s cured, he’s cured. Steve’s hair feels like gold between his fingers and his skin is a goddamn pat of butter and Bucky just wants to be its toast.

 _You’re right_ , Steve says, _there’s no way a dame could resist—_

And Bucky shuts him up with another kiss because he doesn’t want to hear about any dames, any guys, he just wants to keep every part of him in contact with Steve so neither of them can blow away, and finally he knows just what he should’ve wished on that shooting star.

 

3.

Hell isn’t paved with good intentions. It’s paved with snapshots of all his regrets.

When the letter comes, he hides it. In his breast pocket, then his trousers, then finally the one place Steve will never look—at the bottom of the laundry bin. He needs a plan, he’s gotta have a plan. If they borrow Mrs. Gerstein’s car, they might make it to Canada by nightfall, and then they can melt into the wild north. But he knows just how Steve would scold him, say it’s a fight worth fighting for.

Okay. He’s got a plan. But he can’t let Steve follow him. Hell, no, he can’t drag Steve into this.

He’ll blame himself. Say he went and enlisted on his lunch break, just seemed like the right thing to do. Been thinking about it for a while, anyway, been thinking maybe this dumb secret between them, maybe it’s run its course. Sure, they traded those silly cigar bands a few months back—but it doesn’t mean anything. There’s no law. It’s all make-believe between them, just pretending, just nonsense.

It’ll wreck Steve, but not the way it’ll wreck him to have his fella overseas. Have his fella on the MIA list. Have his fella come home in a box of pine.

Oh, god, but he forgot how much it kills him when Steve cries.

 

4.

He starts a dozen letters and throws them all away.

_I’m fine basic’s fine they promoted me you’d be proud wish you were here miss you love you want to hold you in my arms I’m sorry I didn’t mean it I’d do anything to have you back and be all yours again_

The problem is, he means them all, and meaning something, that’s a dangerous thing.

 

5.

He shouldn't be surprised. Steve’s still the same stubborn, insufferable shit. Steve’s still fighting to sign up so he can die at Bucky’s side, like it’ll mean something, like their lives are worth anything more than a handful of bullets and maybe a dead Nazi or two. He forgot Steve doesn’t cry for long. The minute the tears dry up, he gets angry, he’s a blur of action and rage.

He’s got one more night of leave, and all he wants is to spend it with Steve, making his whole body blush, hearing his sweet gasps one more time, more divine and full of grace than any Hail Mary he’s ever uttered, that’s for damn sure. But he meant what he said, because he won’t let Steve be some besotted secret widower. When that letter comes, he wants Steve to spit and say _Good_.

 

6.

He’d rather they just kill him.

 

7.

A name and a number, is that all he is, his name, his number, this grease fire raging under his skin. If he can hold on to that then maybe it’ll flare out as fast as it began. If he can hold onto that—

But he holds on to something else. Something soft and golden, slender and sweet and holding him back, holding him to himself—

 

8.

But it can’t be right, because that golden god is here, he looks on the outside the way he’s always felt on the inside, he’s holding him, he’s promising that it’ll all be okay.

It’ll all be okay.

It won’t hurt forever, Steve tells him. But it might last.

Oh, god, why is he here, where they can put a bullet through him, burn him, tie him up, why is he here, this is everything he didn’t want. Why, Steve, why did you come, why on earth would you ever come back for me.

He wants to think that he knows why. But when they’re safe, when they’re sound, it’s not Bucky’s smile he’s looking for.

It’s hers.

 

9.

She’s everything Steve deserves and it burns worse than anything they ever could have done to Bucky in that medical wing.

 _Do you love her?_ Bucky can’t help but ask, pouring another bottle of bourbon into himself because one never seems to be enough these days. It runs right through him like he’s some cartoon skeleton. There’s nothing left of him to fill up.

And Steve can’t answer, because the answer’s yes.

Bucky—he’ll never forgive himself, but Bucky—he’s climbing into Steve’s lap, he’s kissing beneath Steve’s ear, at that velvety patch where his jaw becomes his neck, only it’s made of muscle now and doesn’t yield to him like it used to, and unfortunately, neither does Steve.

 

10.

_I never knew I could miss you so bad when you’re lying right at my side._

The thin thermal shirts between them might as well be the ocean, the iron-clad prison camp doors. Bucky wrote it down because he couldn’t say it out loud. In the dark of the tent, he pulls the old cigar band from his pocket and twists it around his pinky because it no longer fits on his ring finger. He tries not to wear it. Doesn’t want the writing inside to fade. _To the end of the line,_ they wrote once, a million miles away.

 _I miss you,_ Steve whispers, into the dead of a frosty night.

He laughs it off, says _I’m right here,_ but hours later when his body refuses to sleep, he curls up to Steve anyway, kisses the nape of his neck, pretends it’s like old times.

 

11.

Well, if he has to go, at least it’s so Steve can carry on, and he’ll see that face as he falls, he’ll remember the boy it once belonged to, the boy he once belonged to before they all got caught up in this shit.

 

12.

He thought nothing could break him like the sight of Steve with his arms around her.

He’s wrong.

 

13.

Sometimes, in the moments just after waking, frost still clinging to his eyelashes, before the pain drills into his skull, before the words make his muscles and his bones and his thoughts and his will line up as if magnetized, he sees these blue eyes staring back at him, and god, if they aren’t the most pathetic things he’s ever seen.

Sometimes a voice echoes back at him from the darkness while he lies in wait with a rifle wedged against his metallic shoulder and his breathing shallow and faint. They’re nonsense words, but they leave him with this emptiness inside him.

Maybe the emptiness was always there, and all the words did was echo against it. All the words did was remind him something’s gone.

 

14.

He knew him.

 

15.

He’s crouched over him, this goddamned pitbull who won’t get out of his way. No—he pulled the soldier loose, he didn’t leave him trapped, didn’t leave him to die—But he has to die.

_He has to die._

The soldier doesn’t fail. The soldier doesn’t care about anyone or anything. The mission is the only thing, his god, his lover, the breath in his lungs, the cold wind that pulls him into a dreamless sleep. If he lets his target live—if he lets—

 

16.

As he dives into the water, he taps his thumb, instinctively, to the ring finger of his metal hand. Like there’s supposed to be something there. Some cheap cigar band.

 _Till the end of the line._ That’s what it said inside. That’s what the man said.

And the man’s unconscious, he’s spitting up water and blood, but he’s alive, he’s someone, he’s _someone_ , and if he can just remember, if he can only understand—

 

17.

The first thing he does is burn his clothes.

The second thing he does is steal a notebook so nothing more can escape.

The third thing he does is write down those words, and then circle them, and he’s halfway through drawing a question mark when his tears drip onto the page.

 

18.

It’s been two years. He knows, now, who he is. He knows, now, what he was. It’s that chasm between the two that keeps him up at night, it’s that voice that rang out in his skull, it’s Steve, it’s Steve, it’s no one and nothing he deserves.

So when Steve is standing right before him, it only means trouble for them both. He can’t let Steve get caught up in that.

He remembers how this feels, remembers it like a lead weight at his throat: how it feels to lie to Steve.

 

19.

He knows what the shield means to Steve. And if he can give up all that—no. Bucky’s still not worth it.

Not yet.

 

20.

If he sleeps a million years, it won’t undo a single thing he did. It won’t take a single ounce of pain away, unfire a single bullet, unbreak Steve’s heart.

But at least Bucky won’t have to look at him and remember everything he’s done.

 

21.

The first thing he thinks, when he awakens, is _please no._

There’s a whole process to it, and he remembers it a little too well—but no words that follow after, only a painless shock to the skull. He blinks. He doesn’t feel different. He lives in nowhere, no time, no place. It could have been three days or three thousand years. And he’s still the same.

He eats and then he sleeps and then there are more tests and then behind him someone says _The procedure has been a s_ _uccess_.

His nurse smiles and unhooks the sensors. _You have a visitor._

 

22.

Steve sits in the waiting room, twisting an old cigar band on the tip of his pinkie.

When Bucky enters, Steve stuffs his hands behind his back and stands and doesn’t speak or move. Bucky’s not sure he could if he wanted to—like the ice Bucky wore is inside of Steve now, like everything they took from Bucky’s head is now a chain, leashing Steve in place.

Bucky speaks first. He has to speak first. He’s let Steve surrender far too much.

 _I miss you,_ Bucky whispers.

Finally, Steve thaws. _I’m right here._

 

23.

This time, they’ll use gold instead of paper.


End file.
